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Nov 26, 2020, 05:25 PM
#2661
Confession time - this is one of the few Coltrane records that I can tolerate on a regular basis.
OK - more than tolerate.
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Nov 26, 2020, 05:31 PM
#2662
For casual use, I have this little guy. It hooks up via optical out from my Mac Mini. Of course, for the studio monitoring I have a truly excellent DAC (Lavry Blue).
Not everyone knows this, but the Mac Minis have a feature where you can use what looks like a standard analog output with a special optical cable. It bypasses the internal DAC of the Mac and gives you a digital optical output.
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Nov 26, 2020, 10:11 PM
#2663
Originally Posted by
mlcor
Yeah, that’s bogus.
Compression isn’t added during the process of making the CD, it’s added (or not) during the mastering process. IMO, the simple reason CDs sound more compressed is that o we the last 20 years, modern music has had the bejeezus compressed out of it to make it sound “louder.” Dynamic range becomes close to zero—if you look at the waveform it’ll just look like a solid bar without peaks or valleys.
This of course isn’t true for genres like classical, jazz, ambient (like Robert’s music). Also isn’t true for those of us who get good mastering engineers who know that winning the loudness wars means losing the dynamics and musical expression wars.
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Rick “Preach it, brother!” Denney
More than 500 characters worth of watches.
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Nov 26, 2020, 10:16 PM
#2664
Originally Posted by
tribe125
I agree with mlcor. If anything, it’s LPs that sound compressed, courtesy of the limited bandwidth. The midband and upper bass are emphasised. That’s not to say that it doesn’t sound nice, and the euphonious distortion that mlcor mentions is akin to the ‘warmth’ or ‘texture’ that people like in valve amplifiers. It’s a nice sound, but it’s ‘plummier’ than would have been heard in the studio, or in a concert hall.
An LP will never have the low noise floor of CD, even if it’s vanishingly low and of no great consequence.
Some early CDs didn’t sound as they should have done because record companies used tapes that were mastered for LPs, with all the manipulation that was needed to make up for the limitations of vinyl. With older recordings, some of those compromised masters may still be being used.
MP3 isn’t a high fidelity medium, although most people would probably be hard pressed to identify those recorded at 320kbps. I’ve only ever used it in the car, where 320 files are absolutely fine.
I’ll play 320kbps files at home on my secondary systems, and it sounds decent. Apple’s AAC isn’t that good, and I do that in the car or while working out. Nothing sounds good over the roar of a dreadmill.
I record my LPs onto computer at 24/96. Those sound excellent, if I resisted the temptation to filter out the pops and clicks.
Rick “who usually doesn’t mind pops and clicks unless the music is annoying” Denney
More than 500 characters worth of watches.
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Nov 26, 2020, 10:45 PM
#2665
What music are you listening to right now?
I’m using a Musical Fidelity V90 DAC, which wasn’t that expensive but is very good. I also have a Presonus Studio 24C which is made for 2-channel studio recording (with quality mic preamps, etc) but also provides a decent DAC. I have run the digital output from my CD player (a very good TASCAM unit) to the MF DAC, but don’t hear any real improvement over the one in the TASCAM.
For recording vinyl to the computer, I use a Benchmark ADC1 USB audio to digital converter. I acquired that from a fellow IWL member, actually. It’s superb, with exceptional controls so that the computer can just lay down the digital stream. I use Vinyl Studio for that part, mostly because it is so good at marking tracks and attaching album art. The Benchmark gets its line-level audio from the tape-out bus in the preamp, and I’m using the well-regarded phono preamp in my preamp (an Adcom GFP 565).
The Benchmark is truly exceptional at providing jitter-free sampling.
An interesting test is to record a silent groove and store it on computer at 24/96 in a lossless format (like FLAC), and then downsampled in CD audio (16/44, also lossless), and then in various MP3 formats. Play them back with the volume cranked up all the way. The artifacts of the digital conversion are most apparent at those very low signal levels.
I think I’ve said all this before, probably in this thread
On LP mastering, I’ve noticed that rock music of the 70’s is recorded and mixed very dry—very little added reverb and of course no digital processing. It sounds great to me—alive and dynamic. Modern rock is compressed to Hell and gone. Classical was overproduced in the 60’s because they wanted to justify their 24-track tape machine. In the 70’s, the three-microphone setup used by RCA in the 50’s came back with audiophile labels like Telarc. Some of those sound excellent—vinyl or CD.
Rick “but good music can overcome weak recording, while bad music can’t survive state of the art recording” Denney
Last edited by Rdenney; Nov 26, 2020 at 10:48 PM.
More than 500 characters worth of watches.
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Nov 26, 2020, 11:11 PM
#2666
Originally Posted by
Rdenney
The Benchmark is truly exceptional at providing jitter-free sampling.
Yes. Benchmark ADCs are excellent.
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Dec 2, 2020, 07:35 AM
#2667
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Dec 4, 2020, 05:35 PM
#2668
Just was reading an article in TapeOp magazine with a guy who does mixing and producing for well-known groups. He mentioned in the article that one song he mixed on a recent Dream Theater album had 577 tracks. For one song. That is just ludicrous, even if you assume that the majority of those tracks are only active for small portions of the song. I don't see how anyone could possibly mix all those tracks and claim to know what each one is doing (especially relative to all the others). Personally, I find anything more than 40 tracks a challenge for me to mix properly. But more than 500??? If you "need" that many, IMHO, something's terribly wrong with the material...
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Dec 4, 2020, 05:51 PM
#2669
I've never put anything of mine up here before, but in case it interests you, my new album came out this week.
People can listen for free and download at resolutions up to 2496 FLAC.
https://robertrich.bandcamp.com
Too many watches, not enough wrists.
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Dec 4, 2020, 06:18 PM
#2670
Originally Posted by
skywatch
I've never put anything of mine up here before, but in case it interests you, my new album came out this week.
People can listen for free and download at resolutions up to 2496 FLAC.
https://robertrich.bandcamp.com
I’ve had the privilege of an early listen, and I highly recommend it if you’re a music fan of any genre.
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